Post by Amanda Boczar, Associate director of Digital Initiatives, and Marlena Carillo, Digital Initiatives Coordinator.
For Preservation Week 2025, we are excited to provide an update on the digitization of the Gandy Collection of Commercial and Aerial Photography. With more than 125,000 photographs, the collection showcases more than 50 years of Tampa history from behind the lens of Skip and Sandy Gandy. To learn more about the Gandy family and their legacy, check out the USF Libraries’ exhibits, Bearing Witness from Above and Florida Through the Looking Glass from Florida Studies Curator, Andy Huse.
Preservation and Archiving at Scale
The photographs came to USF Libraries as mostly mid-century photographic negatives, a format known for its risks of deterioration. Vinegar syndrome had started to fade and discolor some of the negatives and the off-gassing from the deterioration made the collection unpleasant to research with. Spearheaded by community partner and local photographer Chip Weiner, the digitization fundraising was initiated in 2023 and digitization completed in May 2024.
Metadata and workflow are currently spearheaded by USF Digital Initiatives Coordinator Marlena Carrillo, who has been ensuring that more than 20,000 lines of metadata are completed by the team every month, a massive accomplishment. Over the past year the Digital Initiatives team has coordinated with librarians, curators, staff, students, and community volunteers who all shared their expertise to edit and research every photograph. The goal of this project is to put a curated collection online but to provide metadata for each and every photograph, making them discoverable even when they are not online. Each and every photograph will be archived with the Libraries and made available for researchers.
As the collection is published, new materials are added to USF Digital Collections on Digital Commons. If you are interested in supporting this work or adding information to the photographs, a feedback link is provided on each photograph.
Collection Highlights
The Gandy collection’s portrayal of Tampa’s 20th century legacy is as insightful as it can be personal. Among thousands of negatives in its 80 boxes are images of projects, corporate events, and products from Florida Steel Corporation, which operated in East Tampa for nearly 40 years before closing in 1995.
Marlena’s great-grandfather was a long-time employee at the steel mill who, like the plant, was gone long before her time. Known to her only through portraits, C.B. “Brooks” Mashburn was a convenient connection while generating thousands of lines of first-pass metadata – even more so when she stumbled across photographs of him while perusing one box of Florida Steel negatives.
an award at the plant circa 1974
While most Tampa natives might not find ancestral records in Gandy’s photos, Marlena’s discovery emphasizes that the value of preserving local history doesn’t end at research. These photographs represent life, legacy, and identity for the generations they depict, even if it’s just the face of a long-unseen relative.
Gandy on Tampa Through Time
The Digitization unit’s careful investigation of each photograph doesn’t just involve determining who is in the photograph, but also where the photograph was taken. Part of the team’s workflow involves geolocating, or determining the physical location of the photograph’s contents, when possible and attaching a set of latitude and longitude coordinates pinpointing that location to the item’s metadata record.
These geolocations are then used to populate the photograph records in the Tampa Through Time Portal, a compilation of archives, tours, and immersive content that provide a comprehensive interactive map of Tampa’s rich history.
Incorporating the Gandy Collection in Tampa Through Time allows researchers to navigate highlighted photos based on their physical location in the Greater Tampa Bay area. A single point on the map can reveal a dozen photograph entries located in the same spot to further contextualize the collection, join the past with the present, and share its highlights among the community.
Portal populates images from the collection in Digital Commons onto an interactive,
collaborative map of Tampa.
Collaborate With Us
The digitization of the Gandy Collection preserves Tampa’s history for future generations of students, researchers, and curious community members. As we celebrate Preservation Week 2025 and reflect on the collaborative efforts that have brought this project to fruition, we invite you to explore the collection and contribute to its ongoing development. Your support and feedback are invaluable as we continue to uncover and share the stories behind these photographs